thinking about last christmas
It’s almost finished. The shopping, the wrapping, the cooking, and all the hustle and bustle of activities we do to get ready for Christmas. It’s almost over, except for the memories we’re left with each year.
Looking back, I never realized what a unique family we were and how differently we celebrated the holiday.
When the babies were little, our family’s Christmases were a riot. We never knew where we were going to find the tree. One year he was in the baby’s playpen and the next year we found him hanging upside down from the lamp.
We could never have a pretty tree. We couldn’t even hang icicles because Lacie ate them, and Mitch thought Christmas tree balls were meant to be thrown. But it was our tree and no one seemed to care what it looked like as long as there were lots of presents around it.
It was Christmas 1959 (the year before Mitch was born) that Santa came to our house on Christmas morning for the last time. That was the year I woke up everyone in the house at two in the morning to see what Santa had brought. Jo said that she was going to have to come to our house on Christmas Eve from now on so we could all get some sleep. Jo had very good connections with Santa. Because of me, Santa had to make two trips a year!
Our family, like most others, had a family Christmas party every year. And we still do. When I was little, and both of my grandparents were still alive, we had two Christmas parties. now that life was worth living! One would be at Nanny’s and the other at Mam Maw’s, until she started renting the Ward 4 parish barn so we wouldn’t trash his house for Christmas.
Mam Maw was more of a socialite, I guess you could say, than Nanny, and she didn’t want to have to clean up after us. I remember very few Christmases where we would party at Mam Maw’s house (probably due to my narcolepsy), but the Ward 4 Barn worked very well.
Mam Maw and Pap Paw’s house had a completely different atmosphere than Nanny’s. Nanny and Paw Paw lived in the country on a farm and Mam Maw and Pap Paw lived in Sulfur City, and we were actually allowed to enter Mam Maw’s house through the front door.
She had a beautiful home, complete with statues of people and cats around her living room and a sleek, shiny black panther that always graced her mantle. (I could never understand why she would be a WO Boston Panther fan.)
One of his most prized possessions was a statue of a Siamese cat that took pride of place by his fireplace. We all thought he was ugly and called him “Damn Mam Maw’s cat”. After his death, it became a Christmas tradition to pass the Cursed Cat. However, when it was Lacie’s turn, we never saw Damn Cat again, until last year. She broke it or someone did, but she’s with me for a while. I always wanted the panther, but the only one that happened was that Damn Cat.
Almost everyone in the family would attend our wonderful Christmas parties, even people we hadn’t seen in years and years. And sometimes people we didn’t know at all, but met for the first time.
Christmas 2010, we had the party at my mother’s house. Everyone calls her Big Mama ever since she started having grandkids, except me of course. (To me, she will always be Jo, and she used to have a Big Daddy, but he died at our Christmas party in 2003 that we had at my brother’s house.)
We all love Big Daddy very much. He was a rare and special person, something like Keno. (Their names of his were even the same, Known.) Christmas has never been the same for me since that horrible party. There are certain events that not even time can heal… Oh, how I hate death.
Anyway, at the 2010 Christmas party, all the guests in Jo’s “great room” were enjoying my grandson, Cullen, then about four months old. Eventually, it was Jo’s turn to hug him and Mr. Cliff’s friend Ann, who we had just met, asked her; “What is his name?” Well, Jo looked at the baby and then at Ann, then nervously glanced at everyone else in the room (they only offered quizzical looks) before finally saying, “I don’t know!”
As the silence thickened, Jo burst into a fit of laughter closely followed by the crowded room. Imagine not knowing the name of her great-grandson! As the laughter began to fade, Jo said, “Well, he doesn’t come around very often.” Then the laughter started again.
Miss Ann was determined to get the name of this cute lump. A while later, my niece, Kalee, was holding the baby, walking around showing her beautiful blue eyes and that dimple in her right cheek. Passing Miss Ann’s chair, they asked, “What’s your name?” Kalee nervously looked at Cullen and replied, “I don’t know!” Laughing time again, no one seemed to know my grandson’s name!
But from now on, we’ll definitely know Cullen’s name, in case anyone asks. Cullen and his older brother Brendan, who was four years old, spent Christmas Eve with me, so that his mother (my daughter… umm… uhh… oh yeah, Carrie) could wrap presents and get ready for Christmas. Holy. That was 2010, this is 2014/15 and we’re having the party at my new Hackberry House.
In 2011, the party was held on Christmas Eve at Jeffrie’s house. It’s amazing that no matter what difficult life paths my relatives have chosen, that warm family bond remains. There was time to talk about the “good old days” and remember those blessed old men who have passed from this life. Keno believes that grandparents should never be allowed to die. I also.
My wonderful grandparents, up in Heaven; please know how much I miss you. And by now, you know how much you’ve always meant to me. I love you, my wonderful grandparents.
Normally, we bring a white elephant present and we play that Christmas game where everyone draws a number and then, in numerical order, they each take a present from under the tree; or he steals a present from someone that he must return to pick up from under the tree.
My sister, Jeffrie, decided that she would host the only Christmas party we were going to have in 2011. While we were deciding which dish would bring who, I reminded her to include the “White Elephant” information. She said, “We’re not going to do the White Elephant thing this year.” “Oh, but we are,” I replied quickly. Miss Jeffrie was unwilling to alter that family tradition!
I can’t imagine why he wanted to skip “The Game”, but he got over it. And we opened our gifts with unbridled greed, trading with anyone who was willing and stealing from those who were not. And then we ate (and ate) until our clothes were too tight and we all felt sleepy.
Oh! I almost forget it! The party ended with a screening of footage from our childhood days! Jeffrie had taken all the old eight-millimeter film from our childhood, he had digitized it and placed it on disks that he gave to each member of the family.
How wonderful!! What memories, our lives and times. My heart was touched. Wonderful memories have been redone in high definition and indelibly replaced in my mental library.
And Lacie? She forgot to bring “That Damn Cat” that year… But she brought it this year and I got it! Or she should say she had it down to the motions. I’ve had to move three times lately and “That Damn Cat” ended up at my brother’s house.
Be at peace and prosper,
Travis Perkins, author
As he told Oyea Kendali